Study boosts new freeway fee

TEMECULA -- Three years after the city of Temecula launched a
string of lawsuits over suburban development and the resulting
traffic jams, current and former city leaders say they and
Riverside County agencies are on the road toward solutions.

That may be hard to believe for a commuter fighting his way home
at 7 p.m. on a Friday, when the northbound lanes of Interstate 15
are jammed with hundreds of others of vehicles headed toward
brand-new homes in French Valley, Menifee and points beyond. But
then again, heavy traffic is never a big surprise for Southern
Californians.

The latest milestone came last week, when the Riverside County
Transportation Commission agreed to a detailed study of
development's impact on traffic on I-15 and I-215.

Everyone knows that a new housing tract puts more cars on the
roads, but so does other new economic activity, such as, for
example, the increasing popularity of weekend dirt-bike excursions.
The Riverside County Transportation Commission's $700,000 study
would quantify new residents' share of the additional freeway
traffic and recommend a fee for each new house that's built in
western Riverside County. The 4-year-old Transportation Uniform
Mitigation Fee, about $7,000 on each new house, helps to build
surface roads; the new fee would be used to build and expand
freeways.

The commission's unanimous vote Wednesday moves Temecula a step
closer to a full resolution of the lawsuits it initiated over what
it called poorly planned growth.

Individual local governments in western Riverside County could
decide whether actually to levy a fee on developers. The
transportation commission is an agency whose members include the
governments of Riverside County and each of the two dozen cities
located here.

The city of Temecula, the county and the commission itself are
expected to split the cost of the study equally, as suggested in
Temecula's agreement to settle a lawsuit against the county.

Current and former members of Temecula's City Council praised
the decision to move forward with the study, and said the city's
lawsuits have continued to bear fruit. Temecula had sued over the
proposed construction of 4,600 houses in French Valley, saying the
project would further clog Winchester Road in northern Temecula;
the city dropped its opposition in December 2004 after the
developer agreed to scale back the project and help to expand the
roads that would connect the new residents with I-215.

The freeway study stems from a suit that was settled last
spring. Temecula had sued Riverside County, charging that its
general plan allowed development to proceed without the necessary
roads.

"We can no longer ignore incompatibility between the general
plan (and the need) for new arterials and roads," said 3rd District
Supervisor Jeff Stone, who as a Temecula councilman helped to push
the city's lawsuits. "The freeway system has had virtually no
improvements over the last 30 years."

Stone said he could envision the recommended fee amounting to
anywhere from $300, to $3,000 or even $30,000 per house.

The April 2005 settlement calls for improvements to:

- Newport Road between Goetz Road and Winchester Road, at a
projected cost of $34.3 million;

- Scott Road/Bundy Canyon Road between I-15 and Winchester
Road;

- Clinton Keith Road between I-15 and Winchester Road.

The settlement also calls for extensive work on the interchanges
where these roads cross I-215. Officials with the city and the
transportation agency said the interchanges would normally be the
responsibility of the California Department of Transportation, but
that the state's strained finances left the traffic problems for
local governments to solve. Some or all of any new fees that local
governments collect would likely be used to fund the new freeway
interchanges and possibly new freeway lanes.

Jeff Comerchero, a Temecula councilman since 1997, said a
uniform fee is better than having to haggle every time a
development seems likely to put more cars onto local roads.

The top official at the Riverside County Chapter of the Building
Industry Association has protested any additional development fees,
noting that the state normally shoulders the costs for building and
expanding freeways and interchanges.

The study follows a similar but less detailed study that was
completed this summer. It is expected to be completed next fall,
said Hideo Sugita, a senior official with the transportation
commission

It would then be up to individual cities and the county
government to determine and levy any new fees, Sugita said. But the
pressure to enact such fees has risen in the last generation, as
the cost of roads has been increasing much faster than the gasoline
taxes that state and federal governments have collected.

"Twenty years ago, you built freeways on fuel taxes," Sugita
said. "Today, you build on sales taxes, fuel taxes, and maybe even
a freeway tax."